David Bennett, a 57-year-old patient who had suffered from terminal heart disease, became the first person to receive a heart from a pig without rejection. The process in which this happened is called xenotransplantation, which means organ transplants between species.
David had been to prison earlier for stabbing a man 22 times. Due to this, his health issues and his refusal to stick to health instructions, he wasn’t eligible for a human heart transplant but was given the experimental option of getting a genetically modified pig heart. Organs from other species have to be modified to stop the organ from being rejected by the body.
In January 2022, a successful transplant, without rejection of the pig heart, was done and although this raised lots of ethical questions about xenotransplantation itself, it was groundbreaking.
Unfortunately, two months later, his condition began to deteriorate. On the 8th of March 2022, at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, he died. The spokeswoman for the University of Maryland School of Medicine said there was no obvious cause of death, but that his physicians intend to do a thorough investigation.
Mr Bennett’s death has raised lots of questions on the viability of xenotransplantation. Be that as it may, one cannot refute the progress made in this field. The first heart xenotransplant ever done using a chimpanzee heart, the patient died after two hours.
People who require organ transplants usually have to wait a long time to get one, because of the shortage of organs. This also causes lots of ethical dilemmas as to who gets an organ and who doesn’t.
The success of Mr Bennett’s transplant, albeit a short one means in the nearest future, this will no more be an issue, as organs from animals will now be viable for transplant to humans without rejection, essentially curbing the shortage of organs problems.
Who knows, maybe you and I might need and get one someday.
